258 



CARRYING HORSES. 



" Condition " 

 and "special 

 contract " 

 Bynonymous 

 terms. 



Special con- 

 tract binding 

 on company 

 without sig- 

 nature. 



Efiect of 

 signature by 

 agent. 



honesty on the part of their servants ; and that the letter 

 of the 1st of August, 1857, did not constitute a special 

 contract in writing, the words " not insured " being in- 

 sufficient, either expressly or by reference, to embody the 

 condition itself into the letter. 



It was held also by the Lord Chancellor (Lord "West- 

 bury) and by Lord Wensleydale, Lords Cranworth and 

 Chelmsford dissenting, that the conditions must be embodied 

 in a special contract in writing, to be signed by the owner 

 or person delivering the goods (,/). This question there- 

 fore remains as decided by M'Manus v. Lancashire and 

 Yorkshire 'Railway Company {k), that in order to give this 

 section {T) its intended extent of remedy, it must be construed, 

 in accordance with the approved principle of interpretation, 

 with reference to the state of the law when the statute was 

 passed. Before that time, every case in which a special 

 limited liability was substituted for the general common 

 law obligation of the carrier, whether by notice acquiesced 

 in, or document signed by the customer, was one of special 

 contract. Therefore, the construction to be put upon the 

 words " special contract " in the act must date back to a 

 state of the law, when a condition signed by the owner or 

 his agent for delivering the goods was held to be a " special 

 contract," except where expressly varied by the words of 

 the statute. 



But a railway company cannot repudiate a special con- 

 tract on the ground that it has not been signed by the con- 

 signor ; the proviso in section 7 only applies to cases where 

 the company seek to relieve themselves from Hability by 

 reason of there being a special contract {m). 



Where an agent who is employed to deliver cattle to be 

 sent by a railway company signs the consignment no(e, he 

 must be taken to have known the contents, and thereby 

 binds his principal {n). If a man who can read sends a 

 man who cannot read to sign a document or to enter into a 

 contract in which a document must to his knowledge be 

 signed, he cannot dispute his liability on the contract so 

 signed, on the ground that his agent could not read the 

 contents ; for in such a case the principal must be taken to be 



(y) See also Lewis v. Gre 

 Rail. Co., 3 Q. B. D. 195. 



[Ic) M'Manus v. Lancashire and 

 Yorkshire Sail Co., 4 H. & N. 349 

 —Ex. Cb. 



(I) 17 & 18 Vict. c. 31, s. 7. 



(>«) Baxendale v. Great Bastern 

 Mail. Co., L. R., 4 Q. B. 244 ; 38 

 L. J., Q. B. 137. 



(«) Kirby v. Great Western Bail. 

 Co., 18 L. T., N". S. 658, per Martin, 



